Evacuating from a bushfire threat
is not always the safest option
The information promoted
by bushfire authorities in the eastern states, that ‘Leaving early is your only safe option on Code Red
days’ has no basis in fact. All
research evidence is to the contrary.
From a few bushfires, home defence could be
perilous and early evacuation wise. From most bushfires home defence is
practicable, and evacuation may be an over-reaction.
Officials
instilling this post-20009 fear that under severe bushfire conditions no homes
can be saved, that death is almost certain for those who try to defend them,
and who urge general evacuation, have not thoroughly thought through the
multiple possible scenarios and consequences of this policy.
For one thing:
Whether leaving
is the safest option depends on so
many factors:
·
whether travelling for a long or short distance
·
whether travelling through forested areas, or
through open country
·
A night-before evacuation is not possible if
fire starts close by from arson or accident
·
early morning safe evacuation is not possible
when lightning starts fires at night
·
leaving is extremely dangerous if fire is
between home and evacuation destination
·
leaving is extremely dangerous when there are multiple
fires that day.
On extreme and ‘Code Red’ days
there are always multiple fires,
often in many regions and sometimes lasting or days. The very conditions in
which evacuation is urged can cause fresh fire outbreaks en route, etc.,
trapping streams of evacuating cars between fires.
Sydney evacuees cut off between fires 2009 evacuees trapped on 'escape' route
For another:
For families
to pack up and relocate infants, school children, aged parents and pets many
times a summer; for farmers to desert their animals; for traders and businesses
to shut up shop; for doctors to abandon patients and for hospitals to outsource
their ill is not a workable solution. Not everybody has a car. There are many financially needy, aged and
disabled rural residents who normally rely on others for transport. At a time
of evacuation, they may not be able to depend on this. The usual ‘lift’ may
plan to stay and defend their home. If they evacuate, piled high as it will be
with their own family, pets and possessions, there may not be room in their car
for an extra person.
For a third:
Historically, over 100 years, more people have died
evacuating that staying: and this is because when circumstances require it, traditionally
many people cannot, and most will not evacuate early enough.
For a
fourth:
The
greater percentage of destroyed homes have been evacuated or otherwise
unattended. Losing a home creates as much, or more, trauma than the effort of
defending it.
For a fifth:
Authorities
urge householders to remember that if they stay to defend their home’ it will
be scary, physically and mentally tiring, hard to see, hard to breathe, very
noisy, and very hot’. So also it will be all these things huddled in the open
on such days on a beach or in the middle of a sports’ oval.
Assumptions have been made about
the dangers of home defence and staying to shelter without any evidential basis:
People died defending their homes: therefore defending means death. People died
‘staying’: therefore staying means death.
The 2009 Royal Commission into the Victorian Bushfires took no evidence on this. Nor did it investigate
why so many homes were safely saved, and how.
Research was carried out, however, by
scientists from the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre (Bushfire CRC) after
the RC closed.
Far from giving justification for
the ‘stay and you may die’ outcry, this showed that the vast majority of fatalities
of those who stayed with their houses were not caused by the fact of staying.
That they were caused by staying without having sufficient knowledge, and
without having been sufficiently prepared in advance. The post Black Saturday
findings of bushfire scientist John Handmer and colleagues* showed that only 5% of those who died
at home on Black Saturday were engaged in any
kind of active defence, and that very
few of those who died had a
comprehensive fire plan. It concluded that that awareness, knowledge, and
appropriate reaction, could have saved them.
Another
research survey found that ‘most (80%) of the homes which were actively
defended survived’**.
It is extremely rare for people who are very well prepared and
practiced to die defending their homes. It is entirely possible for people
thoroughly prepared physically, emotionally and knowledgeably, who have reduced
the flammable vegetation from around an ember-protected house, to safely defend
it on Code Red or any other days.
Bushfire investigators estimated that ‘slightly over 2,000 of the 6,000
homes located in the fireground were lost’. And over two thirds of houses
survived that ‘Code Red’ fire.
Kinglake Marysville
Houses survived‘catastrophic’ Black Saturday 20009
Many, many, householders who
understood how to react safely to a bushfire threat, and had thoroughly worked
out and frequently practiced plans, did save their homes, their precious
possessions, and their families together on that exceptional day. As they have
in the past, time and again. Many have written to me that it was the knowledge
obtained from my books that enabled them to do so.
Sadly, on days of heart-rending
decision-making, many families are persuaded that, ‘It doesn’t matter about the house’. But
it matters afterwards. Afterwards,
when they stand in front of the pile of rubble that was once the essence of
their life.
It matters afterwards - evacuees live in tents after their homes were destroyed, 20009.
Authorities
have been unable to cope with post-Black Saturday rebuilding needs. The only
way to counteract this trend is for people to know how to make themselves,
their bush-surrounded towns, and their homes safer from bushfires.
